Operation FireFly: Igniting Innovation Inside Your Company!
Last post I shared with you the importance of innovation to improve your bottom line and retain your top talent. In this post, I will share with you the first 3 of 9 concrete steps you can take to ignite innovation on your team.
Understand the (nonflashy) new role of leadership. First, establish a safe, respectful environment where individual creativity can emerge. Next, focus that energy in the right direction based on the team’s core purpose and targeted goals. To be successful today you must lead through inspiration and collaboration. Look at your current behaviors and decide which are helping you create a culture of engagement and which aren’t. Start small—and stick with it.
Search for untapped talent on your team. Did you know that what look like plain old fireflies are actually comprised of more than 2,000 known species? Well, likewise your employees are far more complex and unique than you might think. Use proven tools like the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to shine the light on these hidden talents. Employees who are recognized as unique with significant contributions to make, become more engaged and passionate about their work. It’s almost like hiring a team of new creative superstars.
Encourage productive conflict – aka “creative abrasion”. Are you uncomfortable with conflict in the workplace? Don’t be. Conflict is natural, expected, and can be a positive sign of diverse thinking on your team. Keep the conflict focused on the issues and don’t let team members direct their ire at one another personally. Deal with ferocious fireflies, those toxic, manipulative employees who work hard to destroy trust and collaboration on the team. You know who they are; the rest of the team does too.
Creativity and Innovation, Leadership Development, Team Effectiveness Tagged Creativity and Innovation, Talents 2 Comments »
December 31st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Nice post, Kimberly. I especially agree with your third tip. I think too many companies, even small ones with less hierarchies, get hung up in being politically correct and creating workplace cultures where lower-level employees areinclined to give a stamp to whatever their supervisor says, even if they feel the customer or client would be best served by taking a different tack.
The nonprofit I work for runs an annual top small company workplaces competition, and one of the themes we’ve seen among firms that rise to the top each year is that a culture that encourages failure (granted, *fast* failure with an emphasis on quickly moving forward) can produce great results long-term when it comes to the company’s value proposition, marketplace competitiveness, and customer satisfaction/evangelism.
January 5th, 2010 at 7:34 am
Mark, thank you so much for your thoughtful and insightful comments – especially what you see as the mark of true competitiveness in those winning workplaces. I think 2010 is going to be the year of “everyday innovation”!